Falafels

This recipe was originally posted August 19, 2009. Now I’m giving it a facelift and reposting it.

Falafels are a favorite around here. From the first time I made them in 2009, they’re always high on the list of recipes people request that I make them.

Falafels take a bit of time, simply because of the soaking of the chickpeas overnight. You want to make sure you use dried chickpeas for this recipe because the texture of canned chickpeas won’t be the same. Once you’ve got everything mixed up you’ll also want to let it sit in the fridge for the two hours, as instructed.

Now I know some people will ask about whether you can get away with not deep-frying these. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know. I haven’t tried baking them. I know that frying them works and for the occasional treat I would say go for it.

I’ve served the falafels with tahina and hummus but we really enjoy them with a tamarind chutney because we like the little kick of spiciness. I’ve included the recipe for Tahina Sauce below, even though it’s not really one of our go-to sauces for falafels and I’m pretty sure Levi hates it when I make it. He will eat halvah like it’s going out of style but anything else that has a distinctive tahina flavor he’s not too keen on.

Whisk together, adding more water if needed until it is a drizzling consistency. Drizzle over falafel or use in falafel sandwiches.

One last tip!

Just for fun you get to still see some of the old photos I took way back in 2009. I kept them here for a reason. I wanted you to see the texture difference between these ones and the updated photo. You can play around with the texture of your falafel by grinding your chickpeas longer. In fact, the more ground the chickpeas are the easier the mixture may be to work with.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Hey Sara,
Thanks for mentioning this product. I checked out their site and the ingredients sound a lot like what I make in this recipe. It’s always nice to have a quick alternative that is still healthy like this. 🙂

Oh wow, this recipe was posted from when my husband Levi was avoiding garlic because he was having issues digesting it. We omitted garlic from most recipes for about 9 months and slowly started introducing it back with great success. Now we use garlic in everything again! This makes me very happy of course, because any good Italian loves garlic. 😉

I have had these big ideas of trying to make a gluten-free and vegan pita for nearly two years. I have yet to do it … or even attempt it. I think it’s about time to move that one to the top of the ‘must-make’ list. Glad you enjoyed the falafels.

Looks delicious! You should do a recipe on Sicilian Panelle (chickpea fries). I added garlic and some smoked paprika. They puff up light and fluffy and they happen to be gluten-free and vegan. I know it sounds pretentious but we had them with an espresso aioli.

I still haven’t gotten around to making my own tamarind chutney. It’s on that long list of recipes I want to make. There are quite a number of good ones from the Indian market – as long as you double check the ingredients for hidden gluten or ‘food starch’ without the source stated.

No. Sorry. The ground chickpeas have texture that is essential to these falafels – to any falafels. Substituting chickpea flour will just result in a gummy mess as far as I can imagine. If you don’t want to soak dried chickpeas you can use canned as the notes indicate, though the results may vary and I’ve personally never tried using canned chickpeas.

The cooked falafels do refrigerate and freeze well. Just reheat them in an oven to crisp them back up. Make sure they’ve cooled completely before freezing them or they might stick together and tear in the freezer bag.

I put that this serves 4-6 people but I didn’t count out exactly how many falafel the recipe makes. I would wager a guess that at least 2 dozen falafel, maybe even 3 dozen can be made from one batch.

Thanks! Made them today and got 7 dozen of the falafel balls! Taste great!!

One note/question: I put the garbanzos in the food processor and that was fine; also put potato, onion, etc in food processor and I think that was a mistake and/or I over-processed. This resulted in too much moisture (probably from the onion), which eventually made it hard to have the falafels retain their ball shape. I added more flour (I used quinoa flour as I didn’t have chickpea) and also a little ground flax seed to try to get the dough to stick together better. They taste good, but mine are more like small “squares” and patties versus balls — the result of my trying to get them to brown on all sides when they didn’t want to stay “round”.. I think next time I would just dice the onion and potato by hand. Your thoughts and suggestions?

I suppose if you had a larger onion it may have added more moisture to the recipe. I do squeeze excess moisture out as I’m forming the falafel balls so perhaps a bit more squeezing would help? I haven’t tried hand chopping but I wonder if it would make the falafel fall apart with larger chunks of onion in there. If you try it, let me know.